Long considered elusive and endangered, the Sumatran rhino is now estimated to have fewer than 50 individuals left in Indonesia’s fragmented forests. In 1984, conservationists captured 40 animals for a global captive-breeding program to stall an extinction that seemed imminent. Decades later, the effort stands as a case study on hope, loss and scientific persistence. Over two years, Mongabay’s Jeremy Hance investigated the species’ crisis and the decades of failed conservation behind it, tracing failures in monitoring, policy paralysis, and the shift from protecting rhinos in the wild to captive breeding. This special documents a decisive moment in the effort to rescue one of Earth’s most ancient and mysterious mammals.
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